Golly. One would think (as blondie points out) more people would know that Islam is not a monolithic religion with a central point of authority.
Any one who makes claims like "What the Muslim world is presently doing" is ignoring the simple fact the Muslim world is not a single entity. A billion Muslims, a fraction of violent ones. A quater of a billion Arabs in that billion, and a fraction of them are violent ones. Seems the 'Muslim world' is by and large peaceful.
Of course, it suits some Western governments to make the danger seem far larger than it is. The Bush administration already made Iraq seem a danger to America to garner support for an invasion. Setting things up so there is a multi-decade period where they can pass whatever laws they like and spend billions on the millitary (much to the delight of their friends in the arms industry) is a dream for some people. He's still trying to make it sound like if the US withdrew from Iraq next week Seattle would be blown up.
And you know what? It might be politically incorrect to say it, but if every single one of the terrorist outrages they have supposedly stopped since 9/11 had happend a few thousand people would have died. Very bad for them, but it's unlikely we would have been amongst them and it's likely our lives would be largely unchanged in that situation when compared to now. And if we factor in the deaths caused by Western millitary action to Muslim civilians and adjust it downwards for the death rate of Afghanistan and Iraq prior to their invasions, to get a net figure of extra deaths, we would find that less people would have died in total by doing nothing! But they were brown people of a different religion so who cares?
Somehow people have bought the idea that violent Islam poses a real threat to the West. Actually, the fact is if things got really dangerous the Middle East would become a nightlight - you know, it would glow in the dark. But if people feel that tomorrow there could be a crescent flag above the White House, they'll vote for you to stop it even if back in reality this would never happen.
If you make people fear and hate something - enemies of the people, gypsies, Jews, Muslims, Tutsis, blacks - and label anyone who disagrees as unpatriotic, jew-lovers, black-lovers, well, according to the Nazi's at that point you can get away with just about ANYTHING.
But yeah. Muslims are bad. It's a nice simple argument. Be happy with it. The fact that the alienation this causes between the majority of peaceful Muslims and the West actually plays into the hands of the terrorists is one thing historians in the future will definately have something to say about.
I can still remember Americans funding Irish terrorism, on British soil, you know NORAID and all that - funny how standards change.
